Sometimes eBay sellers run into dishonest buyers who, at best, just waste time and, at worst, try to commit fraud. Here’s how to block buyers on eBay in these circumstances.
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Reasons You Might Need To Block A Buyer On eBay
On eBay, blocking a buyer prevents them from making any purchases from you. Blocked users can still view your listings but are unable to place a bid, make an offer, or select “Buy it now.”
Blocking a customer is distinct from blocking a contact on Facebook or WhatsApp. The buyer who has been blocked can still see your listings and get in touch with you.
Blocking eBay buyers shouldn’t be done frequently. However, there are times when you will have good reason to stop someone from placing a bid or purchasing their items; this is especially true if you have previously had a bad experience with a particular buyer.
Some legitimate reasons to block a buyer include:
- Non-payment of purchases
- Backing out of bids
- Negative or abusive interactions
- Fraudulent activity
- They’re a competitor and you don’t want them to be able to purchase your products
The ban will be imposed on all of your listings once you’ve blocked an eBay buyer. eBay advises vendors to use this feature responsibly because of this.
How Does The eBay Buyer Blocking Process Work?
All of your listings will be subject to the buyer’s ban once you’ve blocked them. The customer will still be able to view your offerings, but they won’t be able to place a bid or buy them. For this reason, eBay recommends that sellers should practice a bit of restraint when it comes to hitting “block.”
Blocked buyers can still message you, but we’ll cover how to stop them in a later section of this article.
When & Why To Block A Buyer On eBay
There are a number of situations where you might need to eBay block a specific buyer. Many have to do with the actions of the buyer, like canceling bids or sending rude messages.
Here are a few of the top reasons why some sellers choose to add buyers to their blocked list:
- revocation of offers or contracts for purchases.
- orders that are not paid for.
- whatever constitutes fraud.
- violence-inducing conduct or speech.
How To Block A Buyer On eBay
You will require the buyer’s eBay user ID or email address once you’ve made the decision to block a particular buyer. Once you have the buyer’s information in hand, just follow these simple steps.
Step 1: Go To The Block Bidders Page
Go to the “Block bidders or buyers from your listings” page after signing into your merchant account.
If you don’t remember the link, you can search “Block buyer” under “Help & Contact” at the top of any eBay page. Your destination page will also be reached by clicking the first link that pops up.
Step 2: Enter The Buyer’s Username
Enter the user ID or email of any buyer you want to exclude from your listings in the text box. If you’re adding more than one, be sure to comma-separate each entry.
eBay allows merchants to add up to 5,000 users to this blocklist. Though ideally, things won’t ever get that bad!
It’s also important to note that sellers can view or restore previous versions of their blocked buyers list by clicking the “Restore list” button located above the text box.
Step 3: Submit Your Blocked Buyers
Make sure to click “submit” once you have finished pasting in usernames in order for the list to be saved.
If all the usernames you entered are valid, you’ll see a message like this:
If any of the usernames or emails are invalid, eBay will let you know with a message like this:
Any time you visit the block bidders page or reload the page after blocking a buyer, their name will always be present in the text box. Simply cross out the buyer’s name from this list to unblock them, then click “Submit” once more to save your changes.
An Optional Step: Blocking Messages
You can still receive messages about listings from blocked users. On the buyer requirements page of your eBay account, you can modify this if you so choose. This page can be found in your account’s “Site Preferences” tab.
Don’t allow blocked buyers to contact me by checking the box, and you’re good to go.
Buyers who have been blocked won’t see your listings’ “Contact seller” button anymore.
The one drawback to this is that users who have been blocked can still contact you about any previous transactions they’ve had with you.
Pre-emptively Blocking Buyers
If you frequently find yourself blocking customers, it might be a good idea to establish some criteria that will bar particular demographics from buying your goods.
Users with a history of non-payment, for instance, could be blocked. You might avoid a lot of headaches and cases involving unpaid items as a result of doing this.
Or, if you wanted to be really cunning, you could restrict sales to people from specific nations or areas where shipping is expensive. If you work with products that have low profit margins and provide free shipping, this could be a great way to safeguard your company.
Block Ebay Buyers By Setting Up Requirements
Sellers can specify the minimal requirements that eBay users must meet in order to make a purchase from their store by adding buyer requirements to their eBay store. This can lessen the possibility of a merchant encountering unfavorable customers.
However, you should exercise caution when putting these demands into place because they might affect their eBay sales. To set a higher bar for purchasing from you, this function can (and should) be used only occasionally.
On the Buyer Requirements page, merchants can block buyers who:
- Have a history of non-payment recorded on their account
- Have breached other eBay policies in the past
- Have a low feedback score
- Are currently winning or have bought 1-100 of your items in the past ten days (you specify the number)
- Don’t have a PayPal account
- Have a primary delivery address in an area you don’t ship to
Again, you can visit the Buyer Requirements page to put some of these requirements into practice for your eBay store. (As we already mentioned, the Site Preferences tab in your account gives you access to this page as well.)
You can automatically forbid some buyers by setting up requirements for buyers.
Block Buyers By Location
Additionally, eBay sellers have the option of blocking users from a specific region or nation.
This mostly makes sense for businesses looking to lower eBay shipping costs. To avoid international shipping, for instance, one might only want to ship to domestic users. The lower 48 states, such as Alaska and Hawaii, have higher shipping costs than the rest of the US mainland, so US-based merchants may want to go even further and restrict orders to these areas.
You can go to your account’s shipping preferences to exclude buyers from a specific area. You can also find this link in the site preferences section of your account.
From this point on, you can exclude shipping locations using the section that follows. Click “edit” next to this heading.
By simply checking the appropriate boxes, you can now create a list of shipping addresses that are not accepted.
Go back to the buyer requirements page and select the “Block buyers from areas you don’t ship to” checkbox to finish.
If you can’t afford to ship to some places, excluding those locations from your shipping list is a wise choice.
How To Unblock A Buyer On eBay
Have you reconsidered blocking a particular buyer? No issue, simply take the same actions outlined above to unblock them. Only this time, once you get to the “Block Bidders or Buyers from Your Listings” page, you’ll be deleting that buyer’s username from the text box. Then hit “Submit” to finish unblocking them.
How To Block Messages From Specific Users
The ability to message you still exist when you block a buyer on eBay, as we previously mentioned. You have the option to easily block messages coming from them as well.
In order to block messages from blocked buyers, you just need to:
- Go to the “Site Preferences” tab of your eBay account.
- Click on the “Buyer Requirements” page.
- Mark the “Don’t allow blocked buyers to contact me” box.
You’re all done! Now blocked buyers won’t have the option to click “contact seller” on any of your listings. (Remember that if customers bought from you before you were blocked, they might still be able to get in touch with you about previous transactions.)
How To Proactively Block Groups Of Buyers
There are instances when you might want to proactively block particular buyers. For instance, some sellers prevent high shipping costs by anticipatorily denying purchases from customers who reside outside of their selling region.
On the aforementioned “Buyer Requirements” page, you can block buyers based on a range of criteria, including:
- a pattern of unpaid debt.
- A low feedback score.
- a past that includes breaking eBay policies.
- a PayPal account but not having one.
- living in or making a delivery request to a location outside of your selling area.
Don’t Get Carried Away
It’s crucial to stress again that you should exercise caution if you decide to block a buyer on eBay. The more buyers you block, the more likely it is that your sales or seller reputation will suffer.
It might be time to reevaluate your blocking criteria if you notice that your list of blocked customers is growing or if your sales start to suffer. Perhaps you ought to widen your selling range or exercise a little more patience in your blocking judgments.
Conclusion
In order to block a buyer, you will need to go to “My eBay Sold” and click on the item you want to block the buyer from purchasing. Click “Block Buyer.” Once you’ve entered their contact information (phone number or email address), you’ll be asked to confirm that you want to prevent them from making future purchases of your goods.
Leave your orders and product data in Sellbery’s capable hands while you manage your buyers. You can sell on different marketplaces as well as on your own websites, and we’ll help you automate the entire process.
